


farewell this blackened eye

by objectlesson



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Butch/Femme, Desi Harry Potter, F/F, Femme Draco, First Time, Hogwarts Eighth Year, Insecurity, Kissing, Quidditch, butch Harry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-30
Updated: 2020-04-30
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:40:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23920204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/objectlesson/pseuds/objectlesson
Summary: There is always something so lovely about Harriet’s infernal, constant messiness. Her nonchalance. The way she lets her skull show, like all her bones are not a secret.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Comments: 32
Kudos: 142





	farewell this blackened eye

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for my dear friend and and little sis Medha, who requested butch/femme drarry and desi!Harry <333 I love you so much and enjoyed writing this sooo so so much!

The sun is shining low and hot, and perhaps Draco might notice the way the skin on her arms is pinking up with an inevitable burn if she were not too busy staring at Potter, but alas. Draco is often too busy staring at Potter to notice any of the _other_ things which injure her. 

It’s a lovely day, save for the sunburn. Quidditch practice is over and everyone is just sort of lounging around the green atop their broomsticks, lazily flying, shoes kicked off so that their toes might skim the grass. Ginny and Harriet are sitting side by side on either side of the quaffle, fingers tangled, and of course, Draco is trying her hardest not to notice that. Summer is just over the horizon, which means the strange, meandering mess of their 8th year is nearly over and for that, at least, Draco is grateful. The only thing which made it all worthwhile was Quidditch, in her opinion, though even that was not as she remembers it. 

In an effort to promote house unity Headmaster McGonagall declared at start of term teams would be mixed, and as a result Draco ended up not as Harriet’s opponent, as she was for years, but _sharing_ the role of seeker _alongside_ her on the same team. And naturally, she pretended this was a fate worse than death, but in reality, it might be the only thing responsible for their new and tentative friendship. They _tried_ to be as tense and cruel to each other as they’d always been, but the rivalry seemed _stale,_ after the war. Pointless. With Draco’s family in Azkaban and her status at Hogwarts dependent upon her renouncing them, the only familiar thing she had _left_ was the decades old cocktail she felt for Harriet: not love, nor hate, but something between it. Attraction. Obsession. Jealousy. Longing. Loathing. She touches it at night, worries it between her fingers like a well-worn blanket. And eventually, she stops trying to find holes. Instead, she settles into the thin, woven fibers, and gives up. 

She and Harry aren’t _friends_ after that, but they’re not at each other’s throats every second. Draco wonders if slackening the rope they’ve long held between them will lessen whatever she feels for Harriet, but unfortunately seeing her as a human and not a nemesis only makes Draco want her more. They take meals together, sometimes, they scrimmage together and share water bottles and when Harry decides to cut off all her long, thick black hair and shave the sides so it’s more manageable, Draco watches, sitting in the locker room while Ginny Weasley mans the clippers. 

She remembers thick chunks of it falling, Harry’s brown skin shiny in a patina of sweat, and just like that, Draco realizes it’s not something between love and hate anymore. It’s slid all the way over to one side and that’s who she _is,_ now. In love with Harriet Potter, who she’s kept at arms distance for so long perhaps because she _knew_ there was the potential for this under all her layers of denial, and resistance. 

Harriet is fully unattainable, which is for the best, probably. Aside from their bitter history, she and Weasley shacked up soon after the war ended, which, Draco supposes makes an irritating amount of sense. They’re the _same,_ after all. Both tomboyish, both athletic, both obnoxiously moral upstanding war hero on the right side of history. In a different world, where Draco’s history were expunged, she _still_ doesn’t think Harriet Potter would ever give her the time of day because she is _nothing_ like Ginny Weasley. She is not golden and sun kissed and muscular and brash. She’s too pale, too refined, and, as stupid and vain as it sounds, too _pretty._ She knows Harriet does not value the same things she values, that her ideals are impossible to comprehend, and therefore, Draco will never be the sort of girl Harriet might love. 

She's mostly alright with it. After all, there is so much left to atone for. 

So, she swoops down on her broom to deposit herself right between Harriet and Ginny, making them squawk and wrinkle their noses and scowl at her. “Relax, girls,” she says cooly, spreading out on the grass, skin feeling tight and hot with how most definitely burnt it is. “M’just visiting my teammates.” 

Ginny gets up, unshaven calves flexing as she shakes her head so the short, chin-length strands which have escaped her messy bun hit her in the face. It’s things like _that_ Draco could never do: let the hair on her legs grow, quit caring about her appearance so much she might impress Harriet Potter, paint herself as a human in her eyes. Someone worthy of forgiveness. “Weasley,” she calls. “Come on, I was only—”

“Play one on one,” Ginny says, shrugging. And then she’s gone, after shooting Harriet a lingering look, and Draco a withering glare. 

“Why does your girlfriend still hate me?” she complains, poking Harriet in the side with her broomstick. Harriet bats it away, shrugging easily. The buzzed sides of her hair look so fucking soft, so lovely to touch, and Draco’s palms tingle in longing. There is always something so lovely about Harriet’s infernal, constant messiness. Her nonchalance. The way she lets her skull show, like all her bones are not a secret. 

“I dunno, maybe it’s the whole betraying us the to dark lord bit,” she mumbles, crookedly grinning. They've agreed this is something alright to joke about, but it still tightens up in Draco’s gut, makes her defensive. She flattens her lips out into a line, and sighs. 

“I am trying my hardest, you know.” 

Harriet shrugs. “Sometimes that’s not enough.” 

And well—Draco has nothing to say to that. Because she already knows everything there is to know about not being enough. 

—-

The rest of the team wander back into the castle for dinner after the sun does down and mosquitos come out, but Draco casts a bug-be-gone charm and Harriet sits within its perimeters, and together they watch the moon reflect upon the lake in odd, companionable silence. 

It’s a strange thing, a necessary thing, that this happens. After all, amongst their peers they share things no one will understand. Only _they_ know how much the blood of war stains, how deep the scars still go. It’s one of the things Draco wonders about Harriet and Ginny’s relationship: do they talk about the pain? Do they confess what happened, in the darkest, most hopeless moments? 

Harriet is lying on her back with her eyes closed, and Draco keeps staring at her. The peak of her brown lips, the lovely wide splay of her nose, the high cut of her cheekbones, the oil slick of her curls, the glittering shine of lightning that that runs through her brow. Draco has always stared at this scar, always wanted to touch it. Instead, she lets her pale fingers twist in the cold grass between her knees, and wishes so many things were different about their twined, ugly girlhoods. 

“Why do you look at me all the time?” Harriet asks, sounding genuinely curious more than accusatory. It still makes Draco sputter, a blush spilling hot and sudden across her pale cheeks. She takes her pony tail out and twists it back up into the elastic violently, so there’s something for her hands to do. 

“I do not _look_ at you all the time,” she mumbles. “I just. Sometimes it’s mad, to think about how long we knew each other,” she spits out. And then, because the truth is easier when there’s no one but the moon watching, she adds, “I’m only going to say this _once,_ Potter, but—“ and the poison drops out of her voice, leaving it wheezy and blanched as she murmurs, “I’m really lucky you gave me a second chance.” 

Harriet snorts. “I don't know why I did, really, but—Im glad, I guess.” She’s quiet for a long time, and then she sits up, brushing bits of grass from her short black hair. “I sort of just wanted to forget everything that happened up until now. Start over, with whoever survived. And I don’t think you’re as awful as either of us were led to believe.” 

Draco’s eyes prickle, and she blinks rapidly, curls her long, sunburns arms around her knees and draws them to her chest. “I hope not,” she says. Crickets sing, and the lake laps against the shore, and she’s not sure _why,_ but there’s so much ready to spill out of her in this moment. Tears, truths. Summer is close and she’s not sure she’ll ever _see_ Harriet Potter again after that, and she just—she wants to know. She wants to clear the air. “I never _actually_ hated you, you know.” 

Harriet shoots her an amused look, eyes flashing. “Really? You did a fantastic job making me believe otherwise.” Her voice is hard, and sarcastic, and Draco supposes she deserves that. She swallows, and Harry laughs breathlessly then, almost _self deprecatingly._ “I never hated you either, though. I—ugh. I don’t want to talk about it. It’ll go to your stupid blonde head and you’ll tease me forever.” 

“You _what?_ You fancied me?” Draco jokes, flashing a fake-confident grin in Harriet’s direction. “Before Weasley came in and swept you off your feet?” 

Harriet wrinkles her nose. “Why do you—you don’t _actually_ think Ginny and I are dating, do you?” she asks, cocking her head, and…Draco can hardly hear, over the the sudden rush of blood in her ears. 

“I—you’re not?” 

Harriet dramatically rolls her eyes. They’re the darkest green, glittering in starlight. “Ginny is like my _sister,”_ she declares, flopping back down onto her back. “Maybe in some parallel universe where I just met her—but ugh, no, not even then. We’re—she’s too _good,”_ Harriet mumbles, tugging out fistfuls of grass and throwing them. When they exit the charm perimeter, there’s a small flash of blue light, and Draco decides to stare at it, in favor of letting her heart swell with the terrible lie of hope. “I have terrible taste,” Harriet snaps then, letting her hand fall sloppily onto her stomach. 

Draco turns to her abruptly, eyes wide and wet in the night. And before the fear and the self loathing and the regret catches up to her, she forces herself to say, “Well. That’s fine because I have _impeccable_ taste. I—I have loved the chosen one since I was eleven.” 

Harriet stares at her, because Harriet is strong and brilliant and _good_ and kind, but she is not always smart. She is not always as willing to recognize her self worth as the people around her. And Draco—she can’t stand it, those wide green eyes, her slack mouth, her dark skin lovely and smooth in the moonlight. She takes her hand off her stomach, laces her fingers, and bends over her to kiss. 

Blonde hair falls over them like a curtain, because Harriet frees the elastic with her fingers. She also kisses back, soft and sweet, and Draco has never been touched like that in the whole of her life. With tenderness, with potential. With trembling potential, like a potion before the magical reaction therein occurs. 

She moans into Harriet’s lips and then she licks them, tasting spice, and sweat-salt, and decades of pent up yearning spilling out, honey and molasses and tears, and tears, and tears. They drip into Harriet’s cheeks, and that’s what makes her pull away. 

The charm breaks and the little moths and mosquitos which have been collecting along the edge of it collapse into their space, fluttering around them like confetti. “I’m sorry,” Draco breathes against Harriet’s lips, meaning so many things. _I’m sorry for the whole time we were at school together. I’m sorry about the bugs. I’m sorry for making your face wet. I’m sorry for everything._

Harriet thumbs the tears away experimentally, a gasp caught in her throat before she drags Draco down roughly, a fist in her robes, breath everywhere, knees slotting like they can fit together, if they press hard enough. “Kiss me,” she says. 

And so, Draco does. She has so much left to atone for. 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Hey, I'm Just Like You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24757192) by [BendItLikeBeckham](https://archiveofourown.org/users/BendItLikeBeckham/pseuds/BendItLikeBeckham)




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